Page 65 of Ghosted By Texas

“Where do you take your shoes off?”

“Usually by the door, but sometimes…” It dawned on me as I attempted to explain, that he’d seen me sit on my couch before in my old apartment, take my shoes off, and throw them toward the door. I only did that when I was wearing tennis shoes though. No way would I harm any of my beautiful pumps that I barely ever got to wear thanks to my dirty job.

“I guess you were too tired to toss this one,” he said as he offered the shoe up to me.

“Thanks.” I took the shoe and then sat to put both on my feet. My belly had popped into a slightly rounded, tight ball at my waistline, so I had on a pair of the leggings Austin had purchased for me the month before. Judging by the smile he wore, the man knew exactly which pants I was wearing.

“Do you think we’ll really get to see if it’s a boy or a girl today?”

I glanced up at him. “I don’t know. It’s supposedly within the window for when we can find out, since I’m thirteen weeks along now. Do you want to know, or did you want to wait to find out in the delivery room?”

He sucked in a sharp breath and stared at me as if I’d just turned to gold. “You’re going to let me in the delivery room?”

It was only then that it dawned on me what I’d just accidentally offered him. That was my damn dreamy mouth running away with me. In all my good dreams, he was there when our baby was born, and we were a family. A happy family. My nightmares were closer to reality.

“It’s your baby, too. I think maybe you should be there to see them come into the world, if you want to.”

“I want that more than almost anything else,” he declared. I wondered what the ‘almost anything else’ was, but I’d never ask that question.

“Okay, well the same question stands then. Do you want to know the gender now?”

“Do you?” I nodded my head and his smile widened.

“Yeah, me too. I’m too excited to find out. Waiting sucks.”

“Try growing a human inside your body and knowing you have to wait nine months to meet it,” I suggested.

He came closer and sat down beside me on the couch, so our thighs were touching. “I know you have the difficult job here, but it eats me alive every day knowing you’re growing our baby and I can’t do anything to help you along the way.”

Oh damn. I forgot how potent up-close-and-personal Austin could be. Text-level Austin was easier to be friendly with. He pinched a bit of the material on my thigh.

“Glad to see these fit you.”

“Thanks. My stomach popped out a little bit and made some of my jeans a bit too snug to wear.”

“Can I…” He hesitated as his eyes trailed down my body to my middle. The sweater I wore was too bulky for him to tell anything had changed in my body, except maybe my boobs. They had grown quite a bit and I’d been forced to buy new bras to accommodate them.

“There’s really not much there to see,” I explained, picking up on what he wanted.

“I’d still like to see, if you don’t mind.”

I stood and moved so that I was in front of him and then slowly lifted my sweater out of the way. The way his eyes immediately misted up sent flutters straight to my growing belly. He reached out and ran a hand over the slight mound that was now present.

“Becs,” his reverent tone captivated me as he spoke. “This is amazing. Can you feel the baby move yet?”

“I felt something last night when I tried to go to sleep.”

“What was it like?” As he asked that question, he moved his hands to my hips and pushed and pulled at each side to get me to turn so that he could see the baby bump in profile.

“It was just the tiniest little flutter, like butterfly wings on your skin, only from the inside out.” I laughed then as I remembered what I thought it had been at first.

“What?” He asked as his eyes met mine and twinkled with shared amusement.

“Honestly?” He nodded. “I thought I had gas at first. It almost felt like the beginning of having bubble guts when you eat something that doesn’t agree with you.”

He chuckled at my assessment. “I read that it’s often mistaken for that in the beginning.”

“You did?”

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